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Published:
July 31, 2018

Virtual Teams For Dummies

Overview

Set your virtual team on a path to success

In the global marketplace, people can work practically anywhere and anytime. Virtual teams cut across the boundaries of time, space, culture, and sometimes even organizations. Rising costs, global locations, and advances in technology are top reasons why virtual teams have increased by 800 percent over the past 5 years.

Packed with solid advice, interviews and case studies from well-known companies who are already using virtual teams in their business model and their lessons learned, Virtual Teams For Dummies provides rock-solid guidance on the essentials for building, leading, and sustaining a highly productive virtual workforce. It helps executives understand key support strategies

that lead virtual teams to success and provides practical information and tools to help leaders and their teams bridge the communication gaps created by geographical separation—and achieve peak performance.

  • Includes research findings based on a year-long study on the effectiveness of virtual teams
  • Mindset and skill shift for managers from old school traditional team management to virtual team management
  • Covers the communication and relationship strategies for virtual teams
  • Examines how the frequency of in-person meetings affects a remote team’s success

Written by an award-winning leadership expert, this book is your one-stop resource on creating and sustaining a successful virtual team.

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About The Author

A 20-year talent development professional,Tara Powers is an international best-selling author, award-winning leadership expert, and sought-after keynote speaker. She's worked with more than 200 companies and 15,000 leaders worldwide, building and launching talent initiatives that deliver high touch and high impact for her clients.

Sample Chapters

virtual teams for dummies

CHEAT SHEET

Highly productive and successful virtual teams don’t happen by accident. When leading a virtual team, all team leaders should use certain key tactics set up their virtual team to be focused, connected, and empowered. Regardless of where your virtual team members are located, you can encourage a thriving virtual team culture by evaluating your virtual leadership skills to discover opportunities to improve, and by using the following tips to set clear expectations, delegate effectively, develop cultural intelligence, and use collaboratively technology appropriately.

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Articles from
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Virtual teams have different needs than teams who are located in the same office. If you’re not careful, the literal distance between team members can create figurative distances. From there you can expect communication breakdown, reduced productivity, disengagement, confusion, mistrust, and ultimately, failure.
Virtual teams aren’t a good fit for all organizations. Your company may be willing, but not ready — or perhaps it’s the other way around. You may not have the technology to support virtual team adoption. Or your organization has the technology in place and employees are asking for it, but your co-located executive team is hesitant to agree to it.
You did extensive research. You weighed the pros and cons. You interviewed current users at other companies. You considered your budget and current IT infrastructure. You vetted all the options and a completed your due diligence. Then you finally decided on the best collaborative technology tool for your virtual team.
Delegation is important for any leader managing a team but vital for a virtual team leader who has to trust her team members to get the job done without much oversight. Use the following strategies to delegate to your team members so they can accomplish more on your virtual team: Analyze your tasks and decide what to delegate and what only you can do.
If you agree that virtual teams are a good fit for your company, the next step is to develop your plan. High functioning virtual teams don’t happen by accident. They happen because the organization and leader put in the time and effort to build a solid foundation for virtual team success. This includes things like team purpose and goals, role clarity for team members, a transition plan for those co-located employees moving to a virtual team as well as overall communication recommendation to the rest of the company.
In order to implement a virtual team in your organization, you want to ensure that you’ve contemplated some important considerations. Virtual teams can be a small part of your business or they can be integral to all of your business functions. You can begin with a pilot virtual team or decide to leverage your technical investment and go all in on virtual teams.
Your virtual work environment can look different depending on the project you’re working on, your role, your remote working agreement, your company policies, and your living situation. You have several options when working virtually (at home, in a coffee shop, hoteling with your employer, and more).Every environment offers pros and cons and can influence what you’ll consider, what you’ll propose to your boss, or what the next type of virtual opportunity you’ll pursue.
If you’ve ever searched for a job with a flexible work schedule, you know that there are a lot of too-good-to-be true listings and just plain scams. Sorting through all the junk postings makes it hard for anyone to find the truly great flex jobs that are available.Ten years ago, FlexJobs was created to solve this problem.
If you’ve ever tried to create a quality product without a defined, proven process in place, you most likely failed. That’s because quality doesn’t happen on accident. Quality happens when the outcome is intentional, habitual, consistently reliable, and repeatable.Selecting a team framework is a quality process that is important for team success and helps build team culture, consistency, and trust.
Virtual teams can be a real boon for your business, but only if you’re serious about building and maintaining community and culture. As the following sections explain, you can accomplish this goal in a variety of ways using technology, setting expectations, and tracking engagement, satisfaction, and happiness levels of the people that work for you.
Building your virtual brand, otherwise knows as You, Inc., is an area that you want to give time and attention to developing strategically. You have a digital footprint that follows you everywhere you go, no matter where you are located in the world. Ask yourself these important questions: Does it represent you in the best way possible?
The onboarding process is a time when employees need to feel welcomed to the team and have everything clearly explained to them so that they can hit the ground running in their new role. Here are some important steps you can take to develop a strong onboarding process for your remote employees: 1. Have tools and technology ready.
Having a clear purpose for your virtual team and every team member role impacts how you interview, who you hire, how you work with other teams in the company, and what your goals, priorities, decisions, problem-solving methods, workflow, processes, and more are. The steps to defining purpose is much deeper than simply stating your team exists to “find new business”, “make the company money”, “hire great employees”, “handle customer service”, or “build widgets”.
Defining your team members’ roles, the function they will perform, and the way they need to interact with other team members can help you hire the right people for the job and create a sense of clarity and calmness for your virtual team. With clearly defined roles for your team, you’ll quickly be able to identify the type of people you need and use that information to attract and hire the most qualified candidates.
Choosing a structure for your team is vital. It outlines the way people relate to one another, how your team is organized, how roles are assigned, and how people communicate and make decisions.Selecting a team structure involves a variety of frameworks that are flexible to shift and change in order to support changing team goals and priorities.
If you’re in a traditional 8–5 job and you’ve decided to pursue virtual work, you can start with your current employer and put together a proposal for your boss and teammates that highlights the benefits of working virtually and addresses all of their probable concerns. Be prepared to answer tough questions and work through issues to convince your boss and your colleagues that you working virtually will be a good move for the company and your team.
Virtual team members who succeed at their job tend to be self-directed and take more individual responsibility to meet their goals and deadlines. High-performing remote employees are usually supported by a leader who sets clear goals and expectations, gives the team the freedom to make choices about how to design and take ownership for how the work gets done, and trusts them to make it happen.
Virtual work as a career choice is a decision that requires thought and planning. Although at first it may seem daunting to make the switch to working remotely, it can create a fulfilling and rewarding work experience for both the employer and the employee if done with care, clarity, and intention.These sections discuss why virtual work is popular, how virtual work can affect on your life, and some questions you can ask yourself to discover whether virtual work is best for you.
The caliber of leadership on any virtual team plays a critical role in the levels of success and innovation that can be achieved. Review this checklist to determine whether or not your virtual leadership skills are honed to a keen edge or need some improvements. You’re more comfortable delegating tasks and providing coaching and support to your team than doing things yourself.
These tips can set standards for team excellence and provide clarity for your virtual team members, helping you get the absolute best results. Start with a vision of what the best possible outcome looks like for your virtual team. Focus on not just what needs to get done, but how team members will work together to accomplish results and the impact of the results you’re looking for.
Before you jump feetfirst into the world of virtual teams, you want to be knowledgeable about the common challenges that virtual teams face that can potentially render them as failures. Most of the research available on virtual team obstacles cites similar challenges, the five flaws of virtual teams. These flaws generally represent a lack of focus, commitment, and leadership by the organization.
In 2016, I launched a research study to validate and test the theory that the pros of having a virtual team and business outweigh the cons. This study included input from close to 200 executives, virtual team leaders, and team members from a mix of industries in Fortune 500 companies, government agencies, and small business.
Several years ago, as part of my work with teams and leaders on communication, trust, and leadership, I began taking note that more and more of these team leaders and team members had never met face-to-face and relied solely on technology to stay connected.The use of virtual teams, fueled by advances in technology and the promise of reduced operational costs, was growing at a rapid rate.
Practicing mindfulness and sensitivity when working on a multicultural virtual team allows you to recognize cultural nuances, remain flexible in the moment, and generate an overall atmosphere of willingness to understand other’s values, beliefs, and needs. Additionally, developing your cultural intelligence (CQ) offers incredible personal and professional benefits that may include Performance improvement: Culturally diverse teams that focus on discovering how to work together effectively and practice CQ consistently outperform homogenous teams.
Highly productive and successful virtual teams don’t happen by accident. When leading a virtual team, all team leaders should use certain key tactics set up their virtual team to be focused, connected, and empowered. Regardless of where your virtual team members are located, you can encourage a thriving virtual team culture by evaluating your virtual leadership skills to discover opportunities to improve, and by using the following tips to set clear expectations, delegate effectively, develop cultural intelligence, and use collaboratively technology appropriately.
Companies around the world are currently experiencing one of the greatest shifts in how work gets done around the world. It impacts the way people connect, the way teams communicate, the way leaders build relationships, and the way organizations accomplish results. It can be a positive change for people, the planet, and company profits if approached mindfully and designed to embrace technology, prioritize communication and relationships, and support a strong appreciation of culture and diversity.
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